Krauss, Robert's "Making Muscle in the Embryo and Adult" application requests partial support to convene an international meeting, "Making Muscle in the Embryo and Adult". This is a joint meeting of the "Frontiers in Myogenesis" and "Skeletal Muscle Satellite and Stem Cells" meetings that are sponsored by the Society for Muscle Biology and FASEB, respectively. These meetings have been held triennially for more than 20 years, and biennially for more than ten years, respectively. Because both meetings were scheduled to occur in Spring/Summer 2009, and the prospective audiences are partially overlapping, the organizers joined forces for a single inclusive meeting. The meeting will be held May 28 - June 2, 2009 on the campus of Columbia University, New York City, and we expect to attract more than 300 participants from around the world. The joint nature of this meeting is significant and timely for several reasons. The fields of embryonic and adult myogenesis, development and regeneration, have been converging for several years with many investigators now working in both areas and much healthy cross-fertilization. While there has always been overlap between the two meetings, this 2009 meeting will bring the two complete communities together for the first time in approximately ten years. The overall objective of this meeting is two- fold: 1) to highlight recent advances in regulatory mechanisms in muscle development, muscle regeneration, and muscle stem cell biology and to emphasize how these advances are informing potential therapies for myopathies;and 2) to bring together experts in developmental, cell and molecular biology, adult muscle biology, human genetics and translational research pertinent to muscle disease so as to stimulate new research and foster collaboration in these fields at both the basic and translational levels. Ten plenary sessions presenting 63 speakers (20 selected from the submitted abstracts), at the senior, mid-career and junior levels, will address: Somitogenesis and myogenesis;Transcriptional regulation of myogenesis;Patterning of muscle;Myoblast differentiation;Developmental origins of satellite cells;Heterogeneity of muscle precursor cells;Muscle stem cell niche and fate;Regulation of adult muscle mass;Muscle stem cells in cancer and aging;and Muscle diseases and therapies. Three evening dedicated poster sessions that comprise these areas will be held. Importantly, the participants of this conference represent interdisciplinary groups that will provide a comprehensive analysis and integration of recent discoveries in the field. Furthermore, the conference will promote cross-fertilization of ideas and collaborative interactions that will help drive study of muscle biology forward in the coming years. We expect that the major advances in muscle development, muscle stem cells and regeneration, and muscle disease that have taken place since the previous "Frontiers in Myogenesis" and "Skeletal Muscle Satellite and Stem Cells" conferences will make this upcoming, joint meeting in New York an essential gathering for investigators across these areas of muscle biology.